JVP, no Marx

It was Philip Gunawardena, the 'Father of Socialism in Sri Lanka', who introduced Marxism to the political discourse of this country eight decades ago.

Together with such figures as NM Perera, SA Wickremasinghe, Pieter Keuneman and Colvin R de Silva, he wove the warp of this European political discipline into the weft of the indigenous workers' movement.

The modern trade union movement was essentially forged through the struggle for independence from the British Empire. The Left played a huge part in this, even down to creating a lexicon for terms that did not appear in the vernacular tongues.

The underground labour movement during the Second World War and immediately after proved played an essential and vital role in the reckoning which caused the Raj to relinquish its hold on this island.

For nearly 50 years from its foundation, the Left was hegemonic in the coalition of forces opposed to the status quo. It dominated the intellectual space, the parliamentary arena and the trade union struggle.

Philip Gunawardena

NM Perera

Colvin R de Silva

This dominance was put to an end by a two-fold attack. One blow came from the right, in the form of JR Jayewardene's violent suppression of the 1980 general strike, which broke the established trade unions.

The other blow arose from within the very loins of the Left. It came from a 'New Left' movement with a nuance of superficiality which made it all the more attractive to the youth: the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna.

This new ideology was generally referred to as 'soda bothalaye deshapalanaya' - 'soda bottle politics'. This wonderfully evocative vernacular term is from the explosive fizz of a bottle of soda water when it is opened, followed by a rapid diminution in effervescence.

The JVP presented itself as Marxist, swathing itself with scarlet standards and surrounding itself with all the other paraphernalia of the traditional Left. However, the icing lacked a substantial cake. The JVP operated outside the traditional Leftist discourse, which was embedded in Marxist theory.

However, what the JVP lacked in theoretical underpinning, it made up for by a wonderful sense of theatre. No P.R. or advertising person could surpass it in presentation of its message as a product package, full of colour and smoke and mirrors.

This cosmetic Leftism made the JVP all things to all men. It preyed on the baser instincts of the oppressed. For example, it addressed its cadres as 'Mahatmaya' ('Gentleman') rather than 'Sahodaraya ('Comrade').

An old ex-JVPer related this anecdote from 1970. He and a group of his JVP comrades had gone to a lecture by the Marxist veteran V Karalasingham (better known by his wartime codename 'Carlo'), at which they raised some questions taken straight from the '5 lessons' of Wijeweera.

Carlo had responded with a short but hard-hitting exposition of the Leninist theory of revolution, by which he showed that there was no revolutionary situation in Sri Lanka at that time, that the concatenation of circumstances and the alignment of forces didn't merit an insurrection.

The suitably impressed JVPers thereupon raised the matter at a meeting addressed by a very senior JVP leader. His rejoinder had been to tell the other JVPers to assault these troublemakers and drive them out. The questioners ended up in hospital.

The subsequent history of the JVP was of it sacrificing some of the best and brightest of our youth on insurrections which were doomed from the start.

After 1994 it seemed that the JVP had turned over a new leaf and entered the democratic mainstream. Ten years later its alliance with the United People's Freedom Alliance brought it to government office for the first time.

However, within a few years it had broken with President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government. The more enlightened of its members remained with the UPFA. The rump then joined in an unprincipled alliance with the Right-wing against the Centre-Left.

This revealed for all to see the fundamental flaw in the fabric of this so-called Marxist party - its very lack of Marxism. The blood-red that envelops the JVP was shown to be a few microns thick, hiding a rotten core.

The JVP is now racked by internal dissension. The crisis appears quite severe: the headquarters of the JVP at Battaramulla has been closed, and several of its front organizations are in suspension.

It seems that the controlling faction of Somawansa Amerasinghe and Tilwin Silva is being challenged by a 'Bolshevik' group led by Kumar (the alias of Premkumar Gunaratnam), Marlon, Asoka, Lasith and Dimuth.

Now, given the history and the shallow theoretical base of the JVP, the label 'Bolshevik' probably has no meaning except in trying to get across the message that it is more radical than the party leadership.

Historically, the Left was plagued by splits, even at the height of its effectiveness. The Communist Party was a split-off from the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, as was Philip's own MEP. The CP in its turn split into wings aligned to the USSR and to China, respectively.

A brilliant spectrum made up different hues of red, of parties, groups and groupuscules sprang out of these splits, with a superb array of initials: LSSP, VLSSP, LSSP (R), NSSP, CPSL, CCP, RWP, DLF, USP, SEP, WML; or group epithets: 'Kamkaru handa', 'Spartacist', 'Proletarian Vanguard', etc.

However, all of these divisions were based on different interpretations of a body of theoretical work, however much it might look like hair-splitting to the outsider. They all contributed in some way to uplifting the political discourse of this country.

When Rohana Wijeweera split from Shanmugadasan's Maoist faction of the Communist Party, he abandoned the fundamental premises on which the Left in Sri Lanka was founded. He discarded theory entirely for empty insurrectionism.

It is hoped, most sincerely, that these dissidents in the JVP, these so-called 'Bolsheviks' are not on the verge of another violent misadventure.